Unsent Letters From A Dead Man: Part 4

I stared through the smeared streaks of grime on my unloved, unwashed front windows and out at the start of another bright, cold and frosty December morning. I enjoyed these high pressure winter days, they made a fine change from the bleak, grey, windswept look that seemed to be highly fashionable at this time of year. I absently ground my athletes foot on the hard edged base of the breakfast table. The athlete didn't seem to mind, so I pleased myself and continued staring into the middle distance, sipping on a mug of sour tasting instant coffee and admiring the strange beauty inherent in the electricity sub-station opposite my flat, resplendent in it's coat of barbed wire encrusted fencing. The phone rang and evicted me rather brutally from my reverie. It's nice to be wanted. I wandered over and picked up the receiver. Karen's voice came hurtling out at me like a pack of startled wildebeest . "Oi! Fuckface!" she yelled. I held the phone away from my ear as she continued to shout good natured insults at me. "Darling, you really know how to come on to a guy" I oozed in mock sophistication. "Ha! I came onto you about five years ago Jim, but you didn't seem to notice" "I can't think why..........." "Your loss bawjaws. Talking of ham fisted attempts at romance, how did you get on with the bint from Belfast?" "She's from Dublin" I said, slightly testily. Karen picked up on my annoyance. "What's wrong with Belfast? Lovely town, great folk.........." "Nothing at all....." I said trying not to sound defensive. "For a start, Dublin and Belfast are in seperate countries, though don't tell that to the men in balaclavas. And then there's the small matter of accents..... It's a matter of accuracy to be honest..........." "Aye, ok," she butted in "The dyke from Dublin then. Doesn't sound as good though. So, how was it? DID YE PUMP HER?" "That's between me and my therapist" I countered. "Hah! So she pumped you? I thought she would" Karen was laughing now. "She raped my poor, defenceless wee baby, the bitch!" I waited for her to stop hooting like a loon. It took a good minute or two, but I patiently bided my time as her hilarity slowly ground to a halt. "Can you keep it down a bit?" I said, my patience starting to wear paper thin. "I don't mind your neighbours knowing what I get up to, but I can do without mine giving me funny looks on the landing........." "Everyone gives you funny looks Jim. I thought you'd be used to that by now...." I thanked her for her honesty, then filled her in with a brief and slightly euphemistic outline of my evening with Elaine. Karen listened intently for once, then asked the obvious question. "So, are you seeing her again?" I wasn't sure on that score. Elaine hadn't phoned me, I hadn't phoned her. She seemed to like me, but I couldn't help feeling I'd done my level best to scare her off with my painfully stand-offish behaviour. The brief silence was enough to give Karen her ammunition. "Aw, you didn't, did you? I can see it now. A night of passionate banging, and then 'Captain Romantic' goes and fucks it all up the next morning with his cold fish act. I know what you're like Jimbo, I've sen you in action!" I blushed furiously, and whilst I knew Karen couldn't see me, I knew she'd detect the admission of guilt in my voice. I decided to cut the conversation there and then. "Fuck you!" I sneered. Karen gave a benevolent chuckle and rang off with a promise. "Remember, I've got her number too. If you don't call her in the next hour, I'll phone her myself and tell her you're gay." "Why don't you go the whole hog and pretend to be my mother?" I shouted after her. The line went dead and I put the handset down. I shrugged, mainly for the benefit of my shadow on the wall, then wandered back to my previous vantage point. The crisp blue sky was still there. The white skin of frost glinting in the sunlight was still there. Unfortunately, so was my athletes foot.

Tall Tales

My entry for the latest short fiction competition at Clarity Of Night can be found HERE. Didn't like it at first, but the more I read it over....................

Well, it's growing on me. Let me know what you think.

Part 4 of Unsent Letters From A Dead Man is on it's way. Here are parts 1, 2 & 3

Cheers!

Unsent Letters From A Dead Man Pt 3

"Jim, eyes open love" A gentle pressure on my shoulder and a soft voice in the pre-conscious fog. I ignored it. "Jim! C'mon, You need to get up" The voice had hardened a little. Still calm and patient, but I knew who it belonged to now. I felt Elaine's weight on the other side of the bed and I turned to watch her. The room looked cluttered but homely, though I'd had little time to take any of it in the previous night when the two of us had stumbled into into bed, haphazardly undressing as we went. Route one stuff. There were interesting body parts to be explored, a crazy, insanely passionate tangle of limbs that didn't sort itself out for a good half hour. She had her back to me and was sliding on some garment or other. My brain was still in neutral, and would be for at least another hour. "Where are you off to?" I said, trying not to sound desperate or worried. "Nowhere just yet" she said without looking up from what she was doing. My eyes followed her in the half darkness as she walked round the end of the bed towards the curtains, opening them with a quick jerk. The light streaming through the window punched a hole in my half open eyelids, scorching the image of the window pane and the rest of the room onto the back wall of my brain, so that it remained in negative when I blinked or closed my eyes. "Now, can you move that lazy arse of yours and come and have lunch with me?"

"I'm not sure" I croaked. "I think you may have shattered my pelvis last night"

______________________________

An hour later we were huddled in the little perspex shelter next to the bus stop. I didn't need to be anywhere, but Elaine was working at 4pm in some shitehole pub in the city centre. I wanted to be back in bed with her, wrapped in those strong arms and legs, buried in blankets and body heat like any sane man would. Instead I was waiting on a bus that seemingly wasn't coming, as the wind and rain hammered against our flimsy hiding place.

"Is this bus usually late?" I asked, trying not to sound too narky. "It's probably broken down somewhere" she replied, giving me a weak smile and firing up another Silk Cut. "Sorry, it sounds like I can't wait to get away from you" I replied sheepishly. "It's just the rain and wind, I'm not really dressed for the weather".

I must have been staring a bit too longingly at the giant fake fur lined parka she had on.

"C'mon Jim, it's hardly you, is it?" she smirked, looking down at the coat then back up at me. Her long red hair framed her smiling face under the hood and made her look like a member of some long lost clan of Irish Eskimos. I wondered how Eskimos dealt with crappy weather. Maybe they just hung out in plastic boxes that smelled of urine, waiting for the No 25 bus like the rest of us. "If you're cold, I could give you a wee heat" Elaine whispered lecherously as she put an arm around me. I tried to put my arm around her, but it felt odd and uncomfortable as we perched upon the thin grey rail that passed for seating in the shelter. I let my arm drop and felt slightly more awkward than usual. She sighed and took a draw of her cigarette, blew out a stream of grey smoke at the ground, then looked back at me with an air of bemusement.

"Not in the mood love?"

I didn't answer, just stared at my shoes and at the never ending whirl of leaves, crisp packets and carrier bags that gusted around us and under our feet. I felt Elaine's hand lightly on my shoulder .

"Look, it's ok Jim, I know what you're going to say"

I heard the low deisel growl of a bus approaching and noticed she had got up to signal it down.

"Not here" I kept thinking

"Just, not here................"

Unsent Letters From A Dead Man Pt2a

The taxi eventually arrived and we left the night and the 3am chill of the city centre behind us. I sank down into my seat as Elaine gave the driver our destination, then she sank back with me, her head dropping to nestle on my shoulder. After a few minutes, I felt her lips and warm breath tracking up and down and from side to side on my neck, starting work on me again . I pulled away slightly and looked at her apologetically. "Easy there missus!" "Aw! I thought you liked that." she said, looking slightly baffled. "I do, it's just........" I trailed off and looked out the window. After a few seconds I turned to look at her again with nothing more than a shrug and a sigh. "I understand. Not here" she said with a nod. "Look, it's ok Jim. Just relax, we've got all night....." With that she put her head back on my shoulder, and stared ahead, as our Turkish taxi driver sped through south side streets that were almost totally unfamiliar to me. He said nothing, save for an inquiry about whether we should turn left or right at one point, but beyond that he gave nothing away. Good for him, not enough taxi drivers had their verbal diarrhoea in such good check. "So, how far now?" I asked her absently. "Five minutes pet" she replied, squeezing me reassuringly. I felt a strange mixture of comfort and embarrassment at her response. I hadn't been called 'pet' since I was about seven years old, yet there was something about the dream-like chaos of the past two hours that had set me a little on edge and her serenity was beginning to put me a little more at ease. I squeezed her back and I stared dead ahead into those green-blue eyes. We slowly and discreetly fell into each other and all remaining memories, tension, and bad karma I had been carrying started to drift away into the aether. The cab crested a rise in the road and Elaine broke away, sat forward and pointed out to the driver where she wanted us dropped off. We fished about for cash to pay the cabbie, then clambered out onto the damp streets of Rutherglen. I only had a the vaguest idea of where we were in relation to any place I knew. I recognised nothing of my surroundings as we walked to Elaine's flat and I concluded that I had left any sense of direction I possessed behind me, somewhere at the bottom of Union Street. I didn't mind. Where I was going, I wouldn't need it.

Unsent Letters From A Dead Man Pt1

"Don't let her kiss you."

"Sorry?"

"Don't let her kiss you!!"

"Why not?"

Karen looked at me like a mother telling her son why he shouldn't stick a screwdriver in an electrical socket.

"Just don't. She'll have you for breakfast."

"Breakfast is an important meal" I said, before smugly turning to look out the window of the bus.

"Yeah, but you've got no idea who she has lined up for lunch and dinner."

"Oh c'mon........... I'm a big boy. Besides, who says she's that interested in me. She seems like a decent sort. Funny, clever, unconventional. Not my sort at all.............."

"If I was a bloke, I'd go for her" she said absently.

I raised an eyebrow and turned the other way, staring at an Asian woman trying to get her buggy and children down the stairs from the top deck and off the bus, a queue of impatient, uptight citizens silently cursing in her wake. I stared at the floor and counted cigarette butts, then looked up again.

"Makes you a lezzer then" I said, not quite as under my breath as I had intended.

The force of her hand on the back of my head took me by surprise and my forehead took a whack against the steel bar that constituted the back of the seat in front. I stared daggers at her as she took her turn to look smugly out of the window.

"Violence is most unbecoming of a lady" I said weakly

"Tell it to a lady then, you little tit!"

My stop arrived soon after and I got up to leave in silence. Karen gave me the finger and a placid smile as I descended the stairs.

Her way of telling me to 'take care'.

It was much appreciated.

The Occassional Life Of Frederick Characteractor: Pt 2 - Hull

If I were to attempt to define Lawson, I'd regard him as a sardonic and slightly autistic Felix Unger to my Oscar Maddison. A constant source of both amusement and irritation. He had departed a week ago, off to Hull to see a sick relative. That's how he is, dropping everything to visit some ailing aunty or uncle at the drop of a hat. I’d only return home to dance on some one's grave to be honest, but even people I love and adore will be hard pressed to see me at their bedsides. I’ve let it be known to those I hold dear that they’ll never be forgiven if they form a vigil at my side in the final moments. I wouldn’t say I had missed him as such, his nit picking and mother hen clucking drove me wild at times, yet it was reassuring that when he was around, things stayed in balance. When he wasn’t around, chaos ruled and I merely did it’s bidding. Anyway, ever the good little housekeeper, he made me rudely aware of his return and had me up and about at the most ungodly hour imaginable. I was simply not designed to be awake at 8am, but the droning hoover and the sound of Radio 2 whacked up to eleven on the HiFi in the living room ensured that I would never get back to the sweet slumber I had become accustomed to in the past week. I pondered the situation as I pulled on two roughly similar socks that looked like they had endured the least amount of wear since they last visited the washing machine. It looked as if the back door would be my only option for escape. The state the house was in after five days of neglect and hedonism would, quite frankly, have left even the most dissolute of souls wringing their hands in horror. The withering look I’d get from the old tart if I was to attempt to go out the front door would haunt me for most of the morning and I could live without the guilt for another day at least………. I made my way to the back door, only realising too late that the escape route had been ‘alarmed’ with the biggest ruddy set of wind chimes I’d ever seen. Great big metallic fuckers that seemed to descend to the floor. They clattered and clanged endlessly over my head for what seemed like an eternity. They continued to clank away for a few seconds more before I tried to bring them under control, with little success. I only ended up making more noise. The hoover had gone off by now and the radio was down to a sensible level, so Lawson couldn’t help but hear the melee and came scuttling through to the kitchen. Lawson loved wind chimes. I loathed the bloody things, naturally, and constantly complained about him bringing home a new set to put up somewhere around the house. There are senile 90 year old women who would consider you crazy if you did that. That said, we didn’t need a burglar alarm, the last guy to attempt a break and entry job made a noise like a gang of drunken Hari Krishna's and was soon chased into the night. Still, I failed to see why we needed them dangling from the doorway of every room. I had often wondered what one would bring back as a souvenir from a place like Hull. If you were Lawson, you would bring back some windchimes of course. Then again, he could visit the moon and find a gift shop selling the fucking things………… “You’re up early” “Am I?” I replied in feigned ignorance. “I have to get to Euston for half nine, I’m supposed to meet my agent” My agent didn't see anyone before midday, and Lawson knew it. He looked at me like I was a child deceiving it's mother. Which strictly speaking, was true, but we won't get into that just now. I slunk out of the back door, feeling his sad, limpid eyes boring into me with admonishing pity. The last thing I needed or wanted. When you literally crawl home at 3am four times a week, it's a sensation that grows old very quickly........... I left the house with the notion that if I got drunk quickly enough, everything would stop being true.

The Occasional Life Of Frederick Characteractor: Pt1 - Trousers

“Lawson!!” I yelled, as I splayed my gangly frame out on the floor of the study. A pitiful looking figure appeared in the doorway and looked in askance at me. I ignored his insolence and enquired as to the whereabouts of my good trousers. “They’re still hanging from the barbed wire at the rec ground. I saw them this morning as I went for the papers.” The memories of my monstrous behaviour the previous night emerged all too quickly from the darker corners of my hung-over brain. The convoluted afternoon drinking games with Charlie and his mother in law at their flat in Hammersmith, the ‘Bachelorette Party’ we crashed in Chelsea, the stolen vintage champagne bottles used as tenpins in a quiet suburban street at 2am……………………….. The bit involving my trousers was a blank though. I half suspected Lawson was pulling my chain on this one, but I’d never known him to have a particularly waggish sense of humour, and I’d have been horrified to see him develop one at this late stage. I had consumed rather more than normal to be honest and it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if i’d staggered home in nothing but my grubby longjohns.

“Ok, what about my white tennis slacks?” Silence. Lawson was no longer in the doorway. Probably off dis-infecting the dis-infectant he dis-infected the toilet with only five minutes earlier. “Even those revolting chinos you bought me…..?” I called. Nothing. "Some manservant you turned out to be!" I hollered with mock indignance. I gave up, lay back and stared at the ceiling again, deciding it was best to think about things that made me happy. My cousin Emma popped into my head. “No Freddie!, bad boy…… I muttered to myself. Definitely out of bounds. Just because Charlie was doing a tad more than lodging with his mother in law, didn’t mean I had to go down a similar route myself. Lord No! She did make me happy though, such a delightful lass, short brown hair last I saw her, a wicked smile and that ‘I dare you’ look in her eyes. She also never had a good word to say for me, which just made me all the fonder of her. I thought of Fridays in the local boozer, suburban train rides on bright afternoons, playing chess with the cat, fishing on canal banks, washing in the park fountain last summer because one of Lawsons hideously prissy hag friends had decided to stay for a month and couldn’t stand to use the bath after I’d taken my weekly ’rinse’…………………. All these things made me feel a bit better about being hungover and ignored and trouserless and lying on a cold floor, staring at the cracks in the ceiling of a crumbling Edwardian semi in North London .

I Knew There Was Pain, But Pain Is Not Aching

I watched Richie blow smoke rings from the back seat of the burnt out car and into the warm evening air, his head tilted back on the semi-caramelised headrest, eyes staring impassively through the hole where the roof used to be. Flying with the birdies, walking the rooftops like an invincible tomcat. In his mind...... I turned my attentions to rifling through the pockets of the coat I had found. No money, but a few subway stubs and half full 'Fernando Frozen Yogurt' loyalty card hinting at some upward mobility in the previous owner. I went back to watching Richie again. He was a cocky little fucker, all wild visions and dangerous fantasy. There were days when I didn't want to know, just wanted to hug the street corners like a vertigo stricken child, but Richie had this way of making you walk tall, of making you forget who and what you were for a time. The reality never quite left you, but adventure was good for the soul and returning to the abandoned factory and the back alleys never seemed to trouble me any more. The hatch opened out and the light poured into the bare loft below. We both clambered up onto the roof top and set about the nightly ritual. Two bottles of cheap wine rested in a tank of cold water as we perched like feral pigeons on the buildings edge. The view was always the same, the gridded avenues stretching out to the horizon, the river glinting in the early evening sun, the world as it truly was...... An ant colony on a ball of dirt flying through the eternal void. It made you feel briefly content, easy on the order of things. Richie told stories between bouts of bronchial coughing and draws on countless cigarettes. Army tales, school tales, stories about his family, the religion he found and lost, then found again. Only to lose it once more in the rinse cycle of life. He felt sure that God would find him again at some point and quit lying to him, give it to him straight............ The light of the sun dipping was soon overtaken by the neon of downtown and it looked beautiful and sick in it's Liberace sequined sparkle. It always did to my eyes. Richie didn't start drinking until the sun was on it's way down. I had usually half drained my bottle by this time, my dusk-light reverie almost at a close, ready to pass the baton of battered dreams to my partner in crime.......

Richie's party trick was to walk along the ledge of the building to one of the corners and back. The first time he did it I flipped, couldn't believe what he was doing. He'd downed some wine, three beers and done a bunch of speed he'd stolen from a now deceased dealer. Still the fucker didn't fall. I barely looked now when he did it. Each time he returned from his stroll I'd look up at him and offer my bottle as a prize. He knew I had faith in him. He knew that I knew he was testing me and that I'd never doubt him. Fuck "parting the Red Sea", this was our own little miracle eight stories up and balancing on nothing more than the curvature of the Earth and a shit eating grin. Sitting at the edge of the building was enough for me, I felt like a cat losing one of it's lives every time I went up on the roof anyway...... Richie turned the old transistor on and hurtled around on the roof top for a bit, an urban Tarzan looking for a new vine to catch hold of and swing out of town. I just sang harmony on the Kinks and Beatles numbers that the oldies station belted out on a continuous hourly loop. It felt like God's word on a C60 mix tape, transmitted from a radio station somewhere in Forest Hills for the benefit of the chosen few. Richie was a little less romantic.

"My dad listened to this shit. I remember he once whipped me to 'Bye Bye Love' by The Everly Brothers after I took a dump on the living room floor. I must have been about three. Still, good shit when yr drunk............."

I lost sight of him for a while behind the old chimney stack and I went back to the remains of my bottle, already contemplating another run to the liquor store for more. Soon I sensed him behind me and turned my head up to see him looking unusually pensive. He looked at me and said he wouldn't be 'performing' tonight. I nodded and told him he'd have to come up with a new trick. He sat beside me and said nothing, just drinking long and lazy from his bottle, back in his trance world, re-living his existence and re-inventing the Universe.

"We're not long Gus" he said, staring me in the eyes in a way that I'd never known him to.

"Not Long........? For what?" I said, letting my confusion show.

"Not Long. You wanted a new trick kid? How's this..............Man Walks On Air"

By the time I had made a grab to stop him, he was about two stories down and fading into the black of the alley below. It was all I could do to stop myself going over too. I heard nothing, no yell, no landing, no groans of pain. There was just a vile sobering chill through my guts and up my spine that made me retch and gasp for air. The Fucker! The Cunt!

"Richie, You Fucking Shit Stain!!!!!!" I yelled into the black hole of the alley. The shock wouldn't go away and my conscious mind had to take over and make the effort to swing my numb legs back onto the roof and make them stumble towards the radio, now playing something by Dick Dale. That station never played anything by Dick Dale. It was almost as if a spell had been broken.

I regained my composure and looked one more time over the edge of the roof, breathing hard and through gritted teeth......

"I hope it hurt you Fucker!"

If anyone is interested in contributing to a fiction blog, can you get in touch with me at ewenic@gmail.com and I'll add you to the author list. Cheers!

May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door

Once again, Jason Evans has thrown me a bait I couldn't resist. He runs a short fiction competition on his blog Clarity of Night, and I, along with a legion of others, have submitted my effort to be poked, prodded, praised or pilloried................

My entry can be read here.

Last time around, I got all dark and twisted with a tale about suicide and emotional frigidity. This time I went for a straight setup and a daft punchline.

Right, that's me away for the weekend. A wee farm owned CL caravan site awaits me somewhere in deepest, darkest East Lothian and I'm going to make the most of it. Fuck this city!!

A Shot In The Dark

I've entered a short story competition. It's No.42 on the list.

Basically one has to write no more than 250 words using a picture of a bare tree on a hillside as a form of 'inspiration'. I'm not at my best in those situations, but it's a good exercise. With some punctuation corrections, it'll pass muster though. I think I'll need to do better next time, there are some pretty good writers in there.

The Dentist Pt4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

"..........Severin!, this is someone you don't know. We met, but never spoke." the voice rasped in a low, flat Northern Irish drawl.

Malcolm deduced that it was the small man he'd seen at the Surgery, the Indian Inked maniac with the thousand yard stare and the unorthodox tooth extraction technique.

"What the fuck does he want?" he muttered to himself. "Apart from the address of a mental institution..........."
The voice paused for about ten seconds, his breathing still audible over the tape hiss. Malcolm waited for the words expectantly, but when they came he was in no doubt. None at all.

"............I'm at your Mother-in-Law's Malcolm. Just came round to make sure they had put the heating on, you know how cold it gets at this time of year................."

The call ended as abruptly as it began.

Malcolm stood frozen to the spot in the plush hallway of the family home, not daring to move, barely breathing and hoping that by staying that way he could hold for eternity the spell of serene un-reality that had fallen over him. The spell was broken by the sound of the phone ringing, but Malcolm ignored it and made his way stiffly to the door. Whatever they had to tell him, he would find out soon enough. The cold night air hit him like a drunk being slapped vigourously into consciousness and his legs regained some of their strength. He lit a cigarette which got him as far as his car.........

He already knew that this was going to be the most painful five mile drive of his of life.............